HCV Sexual Transmission

Hepatitis C incidence is increasing among gay and bisexual men living with HIV in San Diego, according to the largest analysis of its kind done in the United States. Study results were presented last week at the 2017 AASLD Liver Meeting in Washington, DC.

A systematic policy of test-and-treat cured 99% of men who have sex with men with hepatitis C in the Swiss HIV Cohort during an 8-month period and reduced the prevalence of hepatitis C by almost two-thirds, Dominique Braun of the University Hospital, Zurich, reported at the recent 16th European AIDS Conference (EACS 2017) in Milan.

A little more than a year after the Netherlands instituted a policy allowing unrestricted access to direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) for the hepatitis C treatment, researchers have already seen a dramatic decline in acute HCV infections among one at-risk population, HIV-positive men who have sex with men, according to findings reported at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections this week in Seattle.

Around 1 in 7 gay and bisexual men cured of hepatitis C at major treatment centers in Germany have become reinfected since 2014, according to findings from the German Hepatitis C Cohort presented at the 16th European AIDS Conference (EACS 2017) in Milan in October. At least half of these men became reinfected within a year of completing treatment and all reinfections occurred within 18 months.

The prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection among HIV-positive men who have sex with men in San Diego has increased over the past 15 years, especially among men who do not inject drugs but use methamphetamine, according to a study presented at the 2016 AASLD Liver Meeting this month in Boston. Another study by the same research team found that post-treatment reinfection is also a concern in this population.